What command is used to stop processes by their names rather than by PID numbers?

The command that allows users to stop processes by their names rather than by their Process ID (PID) is pkill. When you use pkill, you can specify the name of the process you want to terminate, and it will search for all processes with that name and send them the specified signal (by default, SIGTERM) to stop them.

This command is particularly useful when managing multiple instances of a process, as it eliminates the need to look up and provide PIDs manually. For example, if you wanted to stop all instances of a process named "example," you would simply use the command pkill example.

In contrast, while kill is used to terminate processes, it requires the PID of the process, making it less convenient for stopping processes by name. killall can also terminate processes by name, but it behaves a bit differently as it sends signals to all processes with the specified name, which can be broader and may not allow as much flexibility as pkill. The command pgrep is used to search for processes by name and return their PIDs, but it does not manage or stop the processes, which differentiates its function from that of pkill.